Beyond the Laptop
by RaineArilan
Summary: Started as a Poem, now has a two-shot attached. Duo has always talked to Heero. For a while Heero was talking back. But then he stopped, for no reason, three months ago. Cuteness, minor angst and fluff. I guess it's a little more 2x1 than 1x2.
1. The Poem

A/N: I was supposed to write a Confession Poem for Creative Writing class. Then Heero Yuy popped up out of nowhere, as Heero is wont to do, and informed me that, not only were we going to write about _him_ now, but we were going to rhyme while we did so. This is so not my fault.

Also, this poem turned into a two-shot fic. Those chapters are already written and will be up momentarily. Let me know what, if anything, you think.

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**Beyond the Laptop – A Gundam Wing Confession**

.

I wish I knew what to say

When he looks at me and I look away

But this is all we do of late

Exchange these looks that suffocate

Dance around the molten core

Hate ourselves and wish for more

.

I feel him at times late at night

When the War crawls out and grips me tight

Memories of twisted death

No way to stop and nothing left

But this leather seat inside my suit

While fires rage and soldiers shoot

Painful habits, long ingrained

Like this stupid job and my damn code-name

.

I grasp for something to keep me sane

When demons dance and dark dreams reign

It's him I need, I've always known

But he isn't there; I die alone

.

If I were asked, then I'm okay

But it doesn't stop or go away

I don't know what I need to say.

All I can do is type and pray.

I portion out my one possession.

A two line email, my last confession.

.

"They taught me how to fight and kill,

But I love you, Maxwell, and I always will."


	2. Heero

A/N: Rated T for minor swearing. Again, this is Heero, showing up in my head and taking over.

Edited 11/29/08 - minor typo, no major changes

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It had been like this for weeks now. Every time I looked up from my laptop, there was Duo, directly in my line of sight. I wouldn't be able to help looking. He wouldn't be able to help feeling my gaze. Then he would glance up and I would try my damnedest to meet his eyes, but I would fail. It was what I was doing right now, in fact. People don't think of deep violet as a harsh color but I couldn't keep looking at it without going mad. I snapped my gaze sideways and let out a silent sigh of relief. The non-descript painter's white on the office walls was so much easier on the eyes.

Duo made a non-committal grunting noise and swung around in his office chair, throwing his feet up on the two-drawer file cabinet that sat behind his desk. His computer he propped up on his lap and after a second the typing resumed. I guess, in a way this was all my fault. If we had been able to get out of this damn office once in a while the whole thing could have been ignored. If only we hadn't been slacking on our reports Une would never have found out and we never would have been confined to our desks for the duration.

Well, not the duration. We would be free as soon as we finished all the reports that had gone late or unfiled, but that was the problem with the Preventers. Why we never seemed to get much done no matter how hard we worked or who got hired. The entire company was awash with military geniuses and natural born fighters. If we could have just be left alone to work we could have accomplished so much more.

We live in a Post-OZ world though, and no one trusted paramilitary "peacekeeping" forces anymore. Every move, every thought and every breath accomplished on company time had to be reported on. In triplicate. Awash in geniuses, yes, but _inundated_ with bureaucracy even more so. I know Wufei was surprised when he heard that I, the Perfect Soldier, had gotten put on administrative restriction for failing to turn in mere paperwork. Duo was, apparently, understandable. I was not. I don't understand that. Sure I knew how to play any part, take any shot, get out alive no matter the odds. Yes, I can hack anything around and build myself an entire, airtight fake identity from scratch in twenty minutes. Filling out a two-page form because I replaced a screw in the damn door handle has nothing to do with any of that.

But _that_ bullshit has nothing to do with _this_, except that it is the reason we've been trapped in this office together for weeks. To be honest I haven't been able to talk to my partner properly in months. I don't think anyone ever noticed. I don't exactly have a reputation for being the most verbose person on the planet and surrounding colonies. In fact, I pretty sure no one else has noticed… but Duo noticed. He would. Aside from Trowa Duo was always the one I could talk to. I know a lot of people would be surprised to hear that, but it's true. There was just something about the guy, like he had been there and done that already. Like he had seen it all, heard it all and there was no way to shock and horrify him. Even when I stole parts from his Gundam he didn't get all upset about it. He _did_ track down a whole bunch of broken down batteries to my laptop and manage to switch the bad one in for the good one right before I finished a given school assignment so I lost all my work. I could not understand, at the time, why he was so damn happy whenever I took a bathroom break.

But beyond that, he was always talking. About himself, about sports, the weather, politics, alcohol, dancing, animals, his hair, my hair, the war, the color of the sky. It didn't seem like there was a topic off limits to Duo Maxwell and somehow that type of attitude was catching. Again, I was never exactly verbose, but I got the job done. We talked. Now we don't. He doesn't know why or, if he thinks he does he isn't saying. He would be wrong anyway. There's no way he's figured it out. If he had he wouldn't still be sitting there. He would have brought it up. Duo Maxwell is many things, but he is no coward.

I, however, am. No one would believe me if I said that out loud. Take a few bullets for people and they start believing things about you. They don't understand how easy it is. Just take half a second and picture what life would be like without, say, Wufei. Think of how easy it would be to beat anyone else at basketball, how his cat would starve, think of the look on Sally's face when you had to tell her. Think about the huge, gaping hole in the middle of everything, then consider what would change if _you_ died. My landlord would have to find a new tenant. Someone would have to be found to be Duo's new partner. I'd left him my car in my will, so maybe Duo would stop taking the damn bus. That's about it. Weigh the options, look at the pros and cons and then take the bullets. End of story. It doesn't take courage. Courage is for people who do things even when they're afraid. I've never done anything I was really afraid of.

Even the war. Even self-destructing. I was never scared. I was trained. When you train for that kind of thing for years you start feeling ready for it. If you feel ready, you don't feel scared. Thus, it isn't courage. Stupidity maybe, but not courage.

I am not brave. If I was I would have talked to Duo the day after that damn, damn, bloody _damn_ nightmare. Yes, I do have them. All the time in fact, but most of them are ambiguous. Blood and heat and black and I'm just _so_ stressed or guilty or whatever. I don't really care about those. They don't affect me that much. But every once in a while the war comes crawling out of the box I locked it away in. Every once in a while it creeps up on me and digs its acid claws into my chest and squeezes.

Those are the nights I see actual events and places and people. Those are the nights I scream myself sick and wake up puking over the edge of the bed. It was one of _those_ nightmares I had, about three months ago and when I stopped depositing my dinner all over the hardwood (No I do not have carpet in my bedroom. I'm not stupid.) I went to grab my alarm clock, to see if it was worth trying to get back to sleep or not. Instead I hit my phone, almost knocking the cordless to the floor and activating the answering machine. I only had one message, from a couple of days ago that I had forgotten to delete and it started to play.

Duo's voice, cheerful, calm and amused filled the air. It was a long message, Duo's generally are, and he went right on chattering about a dozen different things before getting to the point and telling me he was going to be late for the two-on-two basketball game. I knew the content, but at that exact moment it hadn't mattered. All it took was hearing his voice and the dry heaves stopped. I sat back up and I wasn't shaking so badly.

It felt like, okay this is going to sound bad, but it felt like that one time Relena hugged me. Honestly, I think that's the only hug I've ever been given, but that was what Duo's voice made me feel. Like he was there. Like he was holding me.

Like I was safe.

I had fallen right back to sleep, with a smile on my face. I had woken up in a panic. As I cleaned up my mess I came to realization, completely against my will, that if it had been anyone else, Relena, Trowa, Wufei, Quatre, _anyone_ on that answering machine it wouldn't have allowed me to go back to sleep. It was just Duo. Only Duo. I could talk to Wufei, but I could dare to make stupid comments with Duo. I could make Trowa laugh at my jokes, but Duo could make _me_ laugh at his. I had helped care for all of the guys when they had been injured, but I never remembered any of it _fondly_. Not like I did the memory of helping Duo braid his hair.

We were all freakishly close friends, us Gundam Pilots. I knew that. I had always known that. Too many shared traumas will do that to people, but somehow I had never noticed that I was close to Duo differently than I was close to the other guys.

I had never actively decided to take a bullet for Duo. Knowing what I know now, that was simply because I cannot picture a world without Duo without having a screaming, crying mental fit. There is nothing, and no one for that matter, I wouldn't throw to the dogs to save Duo. He would beat me senseless if he ever knew I felt that way. After he finished laughing himself sick that is. I can see it all in my head. I've spent a lot of time picturing it lately.

And that, in a nutshell, is why we sit here in our awkward silence and try to get some work done. I can't talk to him, because if I do I know it will slip out. The words have been repeating themselves in my head for three months now.

_I love you, Duo Maxwell. I love you more than anything. I love you, love you, love you._

But I can't say it. If he rejects me, then what? If he mocks me I won't be able to take it. If he _leaves_ me… I'm scared, more scared than I have ever been and, as I said, I don't do things that scare me. I am not brave.

I finished the report about that one weapons sale sting from last summer and hit Send, my gaze automatically slipping up beyond my laptop to Duo. His head twisted around and I was looking at dark violet again. I held it this time. I would damn well _hold_ my ground and I did… for a few extra seconds. Just long enough to notice something besides the beautiful color.

Pain.

There it was, lodged in my brain, in my memory for all time, like twisted metal shrapnel. He was in pain. I had stopped talking to him, wasn't talking to him and he didn't know why. It was like a bullet in the gut. Painful as hell and toxic unless you fixed it. I couldn't just leave him like that. I had protected him from so many other things, why couldn't I protect him from myself.

My fingers darted over the keyboard, bringing up a new email and I grimly typed in Duo's email address before hesitating over the subject line. I finally typed in 'Old Habits' and left it at that. But now the cursor was in the message box, the empty message box, blinking at me in slow mockery. I should have titled this 'I am not brave'.

Slowly, hesitantly, I started to type. It felt weird, not just because of _what_ I was typing but how I was typing it. I don't type slowly. I never get on a computer without a specific reason, and then it was almost a race to see how fast I could get it done. I don't hesitate on the computer. It's my turf and I rule here. I actually mistyped the first few words because of the speed thing.

_**Duo,**_

_**When I was a child, I was trained how to 'Take Out a Target'. I learned how to use a computer and how to bend it to my will. I learned to live by my emotions. What I wanted, I did. What I hated, I stayed away from. If something scared me… well, I hated it so I stayed away. When J took me in, he trained me. I learned how to kill, how to fight and how to die. I learned that emotion has no place in war. **_

_**That last is what I want you to know. I was never brave during the war. I never ignored my fear and dove into the impossible fight. There was no emotion. There was no fear. J gave me that, but in a way he took that from me to. I never learned how to **__**not**__** run from my fears.**_

_**I stopped talking to you three months ago. It was the 27**__**th**__** of August. I am afraid to talk to you. I thought you were my friend, like Wufei, Quatre and Trowa. You are not. You are closer to me, more important to me than anything or anyone has ever been. If I could trade you to get Wing and J and Odin back, I wouldn't. I… god, don't hate me, I love you, Duo Maxwell. And I think I always will.**_

There it was, the blood out of my very heart, the ragged remains of my soul. In print and on the screen for all to see. I tried to type my name. Tried to hit Send. Tried to stop staring at it. My hands, I found, were shaking.

It was too much, too obvious, too open. Even for Duo. I couldn't do it. I couldn't be this pathetic, splattered across the floor. With trembling fingers I added a paragraph, ripped out my own guts and gave him an out. Gave us all an out.

_**If you don't what to know, just delete this and don't bring it up. My copy is already permanently erased from the hard drive. None of my emails get automatically stored by the company server. Don't worry, neither do yours. Delete this and tonight this will all go into the Box with the war. Tomorrow I will talk to you. I swear it.**_

_**Heero Yuy**_

There. A brick wall between me and the gamma radiation. A way to scrape away from this with something left at the end. Because, even as the pressed Send, I knew it was a stupid idea. If he needed to know why I wasn't talking to him then I could have given him some kind of story to explain it. I had never, ever lied to Duo. Not even the day I stole the parts from Deathscythe.

Before I could prompt my cold fingers over the keyboard, to retrieve the email before it arrived in his inbox, I heard the faint ding that meant Duo had new mail. I started to hold my breath. There was a painfully long moment of silence and I tried to look up from my screen, but I couldn't. Duo's chair squeaked and I heard his laptop hit the tile floor with the sound of cracking plastic. A large part of my brain heaved a sigh. Replacing it would mean more paperwork… but then his hands were in my hair and his lips were pressed against mine and I just didn't care anymore.


	3. Duo

A/N: This was never supposed to happen. But it seems Duo is an annoying as Heero is. He wanted to tell things _his_ way. Apparently Heero didn't hit all the important parts.

Rated T for language.

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I felt the hairs on the back of my neck start to stir and I looked up. I didn't mean to. There really wasn't much of a point, but I couldn't help myself. Heero was doing the Staring At Me thing again and I needed to see his face, his expression because maybe, just maybe, this time I would get a new clue. Some idea on how to proceed. As usual there was nothing. I looked into his dark blue eyes and for just a second I saw desperation. I saw the words _"I need!"_ then he ripped his gaze away and glared at the wall.

I don't know why we keep doing this, except that clearly he needs something from me and I just as clearly want to give it to him. The problem is I don't know what that is. I don't know what he needs and, if I asked him I'm fairly sure he wouldn't know either. Or, if he does he isn't saying. I tried not to sigh sadly, that action had been copyrighted by Quatre after all, and end up grunting faintly as I swung around and propped my feet up on my file cabinet. The laptop warmed my legs as I got back to typing up my report. This one is about the time I fell through a rusted fire escape and got my left leg all torn up. When Heero found me I swear I literally saw him add "Evil Fire Escapes" to his List of Enemies. It was damn funny, but I didn't laugh. I do not laugh at Heero.

See, the thing no one knows about Heero, the thing you really have to know in order to understand him is that Heero doesn't know how to feel safe. He was raised by an assassin and then by Dr. J who, as we all know, is not the most compassionate of souls. He has been trained within an inch of his sanity how to Complete Missions, track down bad guys and kill. Every person, everywhere is either a target, a threat or a liability. He doesn't know how to relax and just _be_. He doesn't know how to sit in a place and assume that there are no threats, or trust that someone else will take care of them if there are. Even when we hang out in someone's apartment, just us five Pilots, I see his eyes scanning the security, checking the windows at regular intervals. Sure he relaxes, he has fun, he laughs even. But he doesn't feel safe.

I'd have to be drawn and quartered before I ever told anyone else that. Not that they'd believe me. Seriously, the guy takes a few bullets for people and they start to assume things. Like that he's fine, mature and well adjusted. Just the thought almost made me laugh out loud. My Heero? Well adjusted? Hell no.

My Heero is a terrified, obsessive compulsive little boy with very few communication skills. Oh sure, he may have all the technical skills of an adult. He can take bullets for people, obviously. But inside... well, some days he barely holds himself together. I try to help, and I think I make some kind of a difference. Until shit like this starts to happen again that is.

It's been three months. Three months since he last talked to me, really talked. Oh sure, we exchange grunts every now and then. I talk to him. As far as I can tell, no one has noticed a bloody thing. It's kind of sad, that. Heero talks to me, but in secret. I don't think he even knows how completely he's hidden that part of our relationship. He doesn't do anything so obvious as shut up when someone walked into the room. He's Heero Yuy. He knows before anyone got near us and finishes up what he is saying before they get in range.

Now, though, he isn't talking to me at all. He just looks at me and I can almost hear that little boy inside him screaming _"I need! I need! I need!"_ But he never finishes the sentence and I don't know how to do it for him. And I hurt for him. Our entire relationship, I've played the motionless man with my handful of sunflower seeds, while Heero has played the skittish wild animal. I have, tentatively, decided that he is a squirrel, but I don't tell him that.

I think, this time I might start to fall apart too. If this goes on much longer I'm sure something in my head will snap. After all, this relationship is as much for me as it is for Heero. I need him. With Solo and the gang, if you didn't work you didn't eat. With the Sweepers, duh, you worked for your bunk. Even with Father Maxwell and Sister Helen, there were things I had to do, or not do, in order to earn my place. With the Doc, obviously if I didn't train and I didn't fight then I was out on my ass. The only people who have ever taken me, without me having to earn it, were the other guys. Even then, there were limits.

I don't talk to Wufei about my life as a thief. I can't tell Quatre about the time I got stupid and got caught and had to play Suck-and-Swallow to get myself out of there. I told him something once, don't even remember what it was but to me it was a joke. Quatre hugged me a lot for the next month or two after that. I would have thought, once, that you could tell Trowa anything. Ha! He's more screwed up than Heero in some ways, I think. I don't have a death wish thank you very much. Anymore, that is.

They really don't mean it. I know that. If I needed to talk, they would suck up their own issues and let me have at. Heero isn't like that. He likes it when I talk. He also judges what I say by how I say it. If I talked about cotton candy in a serious tone, then he would give me that unblinking stare that makes me think he's memorizing every word out of my mouth. If I joked about the whole Suck-and-Swallow incident he would laugh… well, no. He might not _laugh_, but he would smile that Mona Lisa smile of his and shrug it off and move on with me. I can tell him anything, no matter how stupid or funny or dark or hard and it's all the same to him. Hell, at this point I don't know if there is _anything_ I could do to change his opinion of me.

I even puked on him one time, all up and down that fantastic green wife-beater. And what did Mr. Perfect Soldier do? Not what any normal person would do. I thought he would get out of the way, save himself. After all the man can move like a mountain lion. But no. His hand darts out with all his trademark speed and he yanks my braid out of the way, wrapping it around his hand and then grabbing my head on both sides and holding me steady until I finished covering us both in upchuck.

Then he walked out of the room, came back, produced a towel, wiped off my face, slapped my ass with half a dozen anti-nausea patches and walked out again. I passed out while he was in the shower, I really was sick, and it wasn't until later that I learned that he had gone on and completed the joint mission alone without telling the Doctors.

I've never brought it up, because Heero doesn't like to have his niceness recognized. It freaks him out, I think, to actually care and he doesn't know how to deal so he just doesn't. He ignores, ignores, ignores. Make him face it and he will run. I know. I've seen it happen. I can't do that to him. Or to me. I love him. I have for the longest time. I first _knew_, really knew, when he detonated his self-destruct and I didn't hear anything for weeks. I about gutted Trowa when I found out he was fine and the bloody clown hadn't felt the need to pass on that information.

The sad part is, Heero loves me too. No, I'm not deluding myself. I know Heero better than I know myself sometimes. He loves me as much as I love him. _He just doesn't know it_. He has no frame of reference. He doesn't understand that he treats me differently than the other guys. He may claim to live by his emotions, hell he really does live by his emotions, but he has no ability to identify them.

And it really sucks. It really, really sucks. Because if the so-called Kind-hearted assassin and thrice-dammed Dr J hadn't been so bloody well _thorough_ when they raised him to be this poor, stunted man-child we could have had more. So much more. I die inside whenever I think about that 'more'.

The back of my neck is itching again, and once more I cannot _not_ look. My eyes meet blue and for some reason he holds this time, just a little longer. He holds the look without blinking and I suddenly realize that I don't want him to. I can't watch him bleed out in silence in front of me while knowing I can't do a thing to help. My back teeth grind into each other and I fight to shove the pain down into a part of my soul that won't show on my face.

Too late, but he looked away so maybe not. Maybe. It's a stupid hope.

I glanced down at the report and realized that the last three paragraphs make no sense at all. I smothered a sigh and deleted the whole section. Behind me I can hear Heero, typing away. My hand twitches toward the top drawer in my file cabinet. My gun is in there and for some reason I really want it in my hand right now.

Then I realized, after all these years it was fairly easy to recognize my own 'High Alert, Where Are the Bad Guys?' mode. There was something wrong with Heero. Seriously wrong. He was typing at a pace that most five year olds could manage. Practically one letter at a time. Heero doesn't type slowly. If anything he types so fast I can't even make out the individual key strokes anymore. I've fallen asleep to that white noise dozens of times. This is not that noise.

He stopped and I noticed that I was holding my breath. Maybe, _maybe_ he'll break the silence now. Maybe… Heero started typing again, almost up to his normal speed but much louder. He was hitting the keys much harder than normal.

I bit my lip hard. Heero was breathing hard, the only noise in the small office. My computer dinged, signaling that I had a new email and then there was no sound in the office at all. I pulled up the mail automatically. My eyes narrowed when I saw the sender.

Heero didn't send me emails. Ever. He talked to me if he had something to say.

_**Duo,**_

Okay, that was a good start. He hadn't reverted to calling me Maxwell or, worse, 02.

_**When I was a child, I was trained how to 'Take Out a Target'. I learned how to use a computer and how to bend it to my will. I learned to live by my emotions. What I wanted, I did. What I hated, I stayed away from. If something scared me… well, I hated it so I stayed away. When J took me in, he trained me. I learned how to kill, how to fight and how to die. I learned that emotion has no place in war. **_

_**That last is what I want you to know. I was never brave during the war. I never ignored my fear and dove into the impossible fight. There was no emotion. There was no fear. J gave me that, but in a way he took that from me to. I never learned how to **__**not**__** run from my fears.**_

I stopped, and went back to the beginning. Reading it twice to make sure I grasped what he was saying but, more importantly what he wasn't quite managing to say. Heero was a man explained by his silences more than his speeches. Only when I was sure I understood him did I move on. I wanted to walk across the room and smack him six ways from Sunday for being an idiot. There were different kinds of bravery after all, but I wasn't about to leave the rest unread. This was the first time he'd voluntarily communicated with me in three months. Ironically, that was where his mind went as well.

_**I stopped talking to you three months ago. It was the 27**__**th**__** of August. I am afraid to talk to you.**_

What the hell?

_**I thought you were my friend, like Wufei, Quatre and Trowa.**_

What the _hell_?!

_**You are not.**_

What the god-cursed bloody _hell_?! I was torn between throwing a large aircraft carrier at his thick skull and slitting my own wrists. Instead I pressed on.

_**You are closer to me, more important to me than anything or anyone has ever been. If I could trade you to get Wing and J and Odin back, I wouldn't. I… god, don't hate me, I love you, Duo Maxwell. And I think I always will.**_

The relief was a living, violent thing. Followed immediately by adrenaline and finally pure, unadulterated _glee_. He had figured it out! He had finally figured it out! That explained _everything_! If I could have cackled without hurting his feelings I would have. Instead I simply wondered how sappy this was going to get.

_**If you don't what to know, just delete this and don't bring it up. My copy is already permanently erased from the hard drive. None of my emails get automatically stored by the company server. Don't worry, neither do yours. Delete this and tonight this will all go into the Box with the war. Tomorrow I will talk to you. I swear it.**_

_**Heero Yuy**_

Now _that_ shocked me. Not that Heero had hijacked the company's security systems to ensure our privacy. He did that in his sleep. But that he could ever, _ever_ think I would reject him. Sweet holy gods of the north! Was _that_ why he wasn't talking to me? He was _scared_?!

The shock lost its grip over my brain and the Little Boy Duo that still lived in the back of _my_ head wailed, "He was _scared_?!" I shoved the computer off of me as I tried to get my feet under me and turn around at the same time. By some stroke of luck I managed it without breaking myself and then I froze.

Heero sat completely motionless in front of his computer, his eyes locked on the screen and the look on his face was something I had only seen once before. When he had pressed that goddamn red button and tried to kill himself.

Shinigami growled in the back of my head for the first time in years and I couldn't help but agree. No and no and no! Not now! Not ever again! Not _my_ Heero!

I hurtled around the desks and grabbed both sides of his head, my fingers tangling in his hair just like he had done for me during the war. I only had time to register the shock overwriting the pain in his eyes, only had time to smirk just a little before my lips descended on his.

It didn't exactly surprise me that Heero Yuy didn't know how to kiss. Where would he have learned and who would he have practiced with? Wing? He was getting the hang of things when I leaned back, breaking off the kiss. Keeping my hands in his hair, where I had wanted to put them for so long, I narrowed my eyes and glared at him.

"You ever stop talking to me again, Yuy," I growled, "I stop kissing you. No take backs. No second chances."

He blinked at me, then a slow, evil grin plastered itself across his face.

"Oh, and I love you too." I shrugged.

This time he kissed me. No one ever said Heero was a slow learner.


End file.
